Michigan Senate Majority Leader
Mike Bishop and Gov. Jennifer Granholm both recently stated that a part-time
Legislature should be investigated as long as the proposal comes affixed to a
provision to abolish Michigan’s term limits on state lawmakers. This may rehash
the debate regarding whether term limits are helpful or harmful — currently at
two four-year terms for the Senate and three two-year terms for the House — and
thus whether they should be preserved, eliminated or modified. But this is and
should remain a separate issue.

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Michigan substantially overpays its
lawmakers relative to virtually every other state. However small an amount of
money it would represent relative to the size of their spending problem, putting
lawmakers on part-time pay would be an important and symbolic first step toward
reducing the size, scope and cost of state government.

Michigan lawmakers receive a
$79,650 annual salary, plus an additional $12,000 expense account. According to
the National Council of State Legislatures, Michigan has the second-highest paid
legislators in America. Well over half the states pay lawmakers less than half
of what Michigan does. Some much less than that: New Hampshire pays $200 for a
two-year term, Alabama $10 per session day, and New Mexico… nothing
(just expenses).

Michigan is one of a dozen or so
states with a full-time Legislature. There is no evidence that it needs to be
full time or that we are better governed than the part-time states. Texas, the
second largest state in both people and geography, has part-time lawmakers and
pays them just $7,200 annually.

"Full time" is also a relative
term. In 2006, the Legislature met fewer than 100 days. Neither the House nor
the Senate scheduled a single session day during the month of October —
coincidentally the month before Election Day. Each met just six days in August.
For July, the Senate met five days and the House met two.

It cost taxpayers $113.9 million
for their Legislature in fiscal year 2006. This divides out to $167,000 per law
passed and approximately $54,000 per bill introduced. We could do without much
of this legislative activity. For example, last year a dozen bills designed to
name or rename roadways after historical people, groups and politicians were
pending in legislative committees. Seven received enough attention to become
laws.

Two that became laws, one to rename
a highway after President Ronald Reagan and another to commemorate the UAW
Sit-Down Strike, got bogged down in a minor partisan dispute between pro-UAW and
pro-Reagan lawmakers. Several amendments and hearings later, the bills were
tie-barred to each other — meaning one could not become law without the other —
and the governor signed them both.

Highway M-10 in metro Detroit is
well-known as either "the Lodge" or "Northwestern," depending on where you’re
located. A 2005 law also named it in memory of Rosa Parks. However, the new law
left unclear that the terminus of the "Rosa Parks" section of M-10 was the
intersection with U.S.-24 (Telegraph Rd.), rather than M-24, which
does not intersect M-10 at all. Another bill to clear up the confusion was
drafted and passed into law in 2006. Perhaps the muddle was in part due to three
other bills on the docket at the time that called for a rename of M-10: one each
for Reagan, former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Other examples:

The Senate unanimously passed a proposal to rename a prison after
a former lawmaker.

The committees that got those bills renaming roads also had more
than 20 bills pending for 2006 which dealt with specialty license plates, such
as those that picture university logos.

There were bills pending in both chambers to designate official
state birds, fruits and a Poet Laureate.

Even when nothing happens to them,
these bills all require the time of legislative staff and attorneys to draft
them. What has been listed here are only some of the more egregious examples of
needless lawmaking and activity by one of the few full-time legislatures in
America. A lot of state government needs to be downsized and cutting back to
part-time lawmakers isn’t a bad place to begin.

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Kenneth
M. Braun is a former employee of the Michigan House of Representatives and nowa policy analyst specializing in fiscal and budgetary issues for the
Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute
headquartered in Midland, Mich. Permission to
reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the
Center are properly cited.